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To be a Kanye West fan, you must extract the music from the chaos surrounding it, its maker a perpetually self-sabotaging genius with an unparalleled ability to turn listeners into professional apologists. But it’s also been relatively easy. West’s music, for the most part, is the most sonically interesting, visionary hip-hop of the 21st century, world-shaking enough to overshadow his chronic buffoonery.

But of late he has also appeared to incorrectly believe that his controversies, which have long defined his public image, are the things that make him most interesting, West courting representatives of the alt-right, arguing that slavery was “a choice” and endlessly defending abusers, misogynists...